This invention pertains to mouth guards used by athletes in contact sports and particularly to a mouth guard adapted to comfortably protect both the upper and lower teeth of the athlete. The mouth guard includes a connecting strap for expedient attachment or detachment to a helmet face guard.
Plastic or rubber athletic mouth gards are known. For instance, mouth guards adapted to guard the upper teeth are disclosed in the following U.S. Pat. Nos.: 3,250,272; 3,211,143; 2,630,117; 3,224,441; 3,124,129; 3,096,761; and 3,112,744. Other patents disclose mouth guards for protecting the upper teeth where the mouth guards are interconnected to an elongated tie or strap member adapted to be attached to the face guard or chin strap of a football helmet such as shown in U.S. Pat Nos. 3,312,218; 3,411,501; and 3,485,242. In these patents, the mouth guards are formed of rigid thermoplastic material which is required to be heat formed to conform to the athlete's upper teeth configuration. Similarly U.S. Pat No. 3,314,423 and U.S. Pat No. 3,448,738 disclose protective mouth guards for upper teeth where the connecting straps provide a snap-on connection comprising a molded enlargement or button adapted to interlock with a button hole in the strap to provide means for connecting the strap to the helmet or to the mouth guard. The snap-on connections, however, are fragile and are easily unsnapped upon impact. U.S. Pat No. 2,847,003 discloses an upper tooth guard having a similar snap-on connection with a strap secured to a helmet chin strap. Disclosed in U.S. Pat No. 2,521,039 is a full mouth guard comprising an enlarged upper tooth guard and a lower tooth guard adapted to cover both the upper and lower teeth as well as the adjacent gums. The reference mouth guard is provided with breathing channels disposed between the vertically spaced apart upper and lower guards to enable the athlete to breathe. However, the mouth guard is abnormally bulky and cumbersome in addition to being inherently dangerous. Continuous gripping by the athlete's spaced apart jaws endangers the athlete to jaw injuries and dislocations due to sudden impacts against the jaws vertically spread apart by the reference mouth guard. The enlarged lower tooth guard further irritates the athlete's lower gums and further contributes to the discomfort and endangerment to jaw injuries while in use.
It now has been found that these and other dangers and discomforts can be avoided by a mouth guard made of molded resilient rubber and adapted to protect both the upper and lower teeth and further maintain locking engagement of the jaws to prevent lateral movement of the lateral jaw. The mouth guard of this invention can be safely used without difficult breathing problems by attaching the mouth guard to a flexible connecting strap adapted to be easily attached or detached to a helmet face guard but remain well secured thereto during use. The resilient rubber molded mouth guard is much more durable than rigid thermoplastic mouth guards which are susceptible to chewing and destruction. The resilient rubber flanges can be easily trimmed if necessary to fit the athlete's teeth but does not require heat to conform the mouth guard. Hence the resilient rubber composition provides a comfortable fit and full protection to the teeth. The integral upper and lower guards interconnected by a narrow web adapted to engage the gripping upper and lower teeth maintains the natural tight locking engagement between the upper and lower jaw which further prevents lateral movement of the lower jaw and jaw injuries. The connecting strap contains a looping arrangement at the distal end wherein an oblong opening permits looping the strap around a bar on the face mask and passing the mouth guard through the oblong opening to provide a tight and secure attachment of the mouth piece to a helmet. These and other advantages will become more apparent by referring to drawings and detailed description of the invention.